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tacomaprime

tacomaprime

No, there should be no problem with handling the capsules, just don;t get them wet.

Another question, is the material in the capsules a fine powder or small beads? Everything I'm finding indicates the they don't make then with powder, and that would make a big difference.

Hmm. I screenshotted it instead. The material is beads. I originally was going to count beads, like starting out taking 90 beads and taking them. But the number of beads varied from 93 to 106, so I figured I wouldn't be getting an accurate dose. So instead I weighed all the beads in each capsule, then weighed out 90 percent of that. Everyone said that would be way more accurate.

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Raye

Raye

NOTE: If you a looking for a digital scale that measures milligrams, it must measure to at least .001g. A milligram is 1/1000 of a gram. A scale that measures to only 0.1g will not measure milligrams accurately.

Im confused with my scale because my pill is a 25mg and when I weigh it it says its 0.130 grams. Is this inaccurate because shouldn’t it be 0.025mg?

Here is an example. I've shown your own tablet and dose in green (however please double check that my calculations are correct).

On 14/02/2018 at 2:27 PM, brassmonkey said:

Hi Gardenlady-- Trying to make sense of the numbers can be really frustrating, especially when we are worried that any little slip up could cause a lot pf pain. For the sake of our other readers a "microtaper" is achieved by doing reductions that are very small, frequently less than 1%. This is often done using the liquid version of the drug in question, but can be done very nicely using the scales that we are all use to using. A microtaper done using the scales can not be as finely tuned as one done with liquid, but with a little care surprisingly small reductions can be achieved.

The key to doing a microtaper with scales is to use the Active Ingredient Concentration as the basis for your calculations. The Active Ingredient Concentration is the weight of the pill divided by the strength of the full dose.

If we use the numbers that Gardenlady provided above it would look like this;

411mgpw / 48.3 mgai = 8.5 (it's best to use the weight of a whole pill and the listed strength from the bottle, but this will get us surprisingly close.)

(so for Raye that would be 130mgpw / 25 mgai = 5.2)

This means that for every 8.5mg (Raye: 5.2mg) of pill material you get 1mg of active ingredient. To take it one step further, we divide that 1mgai by 8.5 mgpw and get 0.12 (divide 1mgai by 5.2 mgpw = 0.1923). Which means that every 1mgpw contains 0.12mgai (0.1923mgai). That's just over 1/10 of 1mgai or written out in long form 0.00012mgai. However you write it, there's not a whole lot of active ingredient in 1mgpw of pill material.

This is telling us that the small fluctuations in the scales accuracy don't make a whole lot of difference in the actual dose that you weigh out.

You can figure out the weight of a specific dose using the Active Ingredient Concentration. Again I will use the numbers Gardenlady provided above for an example. Say she wants to do a 1/2% drop for her next taper. She is currently taking 48.3mgai for her dose. We would multiply that by .995 to get the new dose. 48.3mgai X .995 = 48.0mgai

We then multiply the new dose by the Active Ingredient Concentration of 8.5. 48.0 X 8.5 = 408 So the weight that we measure out on the scale for the new dose is 408mgpw. The only tricky part now is manipulating the little beads to get the correct weight.

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brassmonkey

brassmonkey

Recently there have been several questions about how to read milligrams using the Gemini-20 scale. This is the reply I gave to one such question:

The display on the Gemini-20 will show either four or five digits depending on how much an object weighs. The scales do not have a milligram setting, but rather rely on the decimal point on the gram setting. The maximum is 20grams which shows as 20.000. The calibration weight should give a reading of 10.000. Anything weighing less will give a reading of X.XXX. Even if the decimal point is hard to see, which it can be, the three digits on the right of the display will be the milligrams. So a display of 0123 or 00123 is going to be 123mg.

Most of the other scales people use here are going to be clones of the Gemini-20 and should read in a similar manner.

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brassmonkey

brassmonkey

Hi DMV64 Would you please give us some more information about how you are working your taper currently. Are you using a scale? What is the weight of a whole tablet? What dose weight are you currently taking? How are you making up your dose, cutting the tablets, crushing them etc? Would you object to making and using a liquid? I have several ideas but need some input to figure which to suggest.

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Hibari

Hibari

The tablet contains 25mg of the drug Lamictal (lamotrigine). The tablet will weigh more because it has fillers in it. To get a more accurate weight of a single tablet, weight a larger quantity of tablets and then divide the number of milligrams by the number of tablets.

Please do not use the figures below, they are an example only:

Once you have the weight of one tablet you will need to divide that by 25mg. So as an example if the tablet weighs 30mg and the dose of the tablet is 25mg, divide 30 by 25. Each 1.2mg of tablet weight will contain 1mg dose of drug. Now multiply 1.2mg (tablet weight) x 15 (wanted dose) = 21.6mg tablet weight that you need to measure on the scale.

HI Chessie, this was so helpful to me and I just want to double check something. I've been trying to use the 10mgs soluble tablets but I never (and have written about the before) feel they contain the same amount of meds that regular tablets do. (this could be my obsessive withdrawal brain but so be it).

I now want to go back weighing and cutting from my 25mg tablets.

Using your formula above, could you check my calculations?

The average weight of my 25mg tablets are 40mgs. I divided 40mgs by 25mgs and got 1.6. Each 1.6mg of tablet weight has 1mg of the drug. I then multiply 1.6 by 10 (current dose) which = 16mg tablet weight on my scale.

Would that be correct?

Thank you.

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brassmonkey

brassmonkey

That would be correct Hibari. If you are going to switch from one form of pill to another it would be a good idea to make the switch and then hold for a few weeks before attempting to taper further. This will allow your body to adjust to any differences between the two types of pills before it has to adjust to a new dosage.

For everyone reading this, we are trying to start using clearer weight notations on the measurements we are writing down. It makes it a lot easier to keep track of what is being talked about. So for the weight of the active ingredient, i.e. the strength on the bottle or the strength of the dose we are using "mgai" as the unit of weight. This would make the tablets Hibari is talking about 25mgai in strength. Then we are using "mgpw" for the actual weight of the tablet or powder that is measured on the scales. The tablets mentioned above would weigh 40mgpw and the dose he measured would be 16mgpw.

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Rabe

Rabe

wondering if I ought to order a scale so that soon after my move I can start to slooooowly taper the viibryd which I think is causing lots of problems after I take it...about 4 hours or so after I am so agitate and it lasts till late evening. Thank you.